


Send Me Your Kisses

by luninosity



Series: Oh Boy! Or, Life's Better With A Buddy Holly Soundtrack [9]
Category: British Actor RPF, X-Men: First Class (2011) RPF
Genre: Comfort, Established Relationship, Love, M/M, Nightmares, Singing, Skype, Sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-14
Updated: 2014-01-14
Packaged: 2018-01-08 18:31:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1136010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two nights apart, a Skype phone call, and Michael singing James to sleep. With eighties music.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Send Me Your Kisses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ourgirlfriday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ourgirlfriday/gifts).



> **Slight Warnings** : contains James having nightmares, and also some not-terribly-explicit Skype sex.
> 
> Title, opening, and closing lines courtesy of Buddy Holly’s “Send Me Some Lovin’”. The nightmare James has is my own.
> 
> For [our-girl-friday](http://our-girl-friday.tumblr.com/), who suggested [James wearing the green jacket from TIFF](http://seitou.tumblr.com/post/73189550568/professorsx-40-43-favourite-photos-of-james) as a prompt for this ’verse.
> 
> As ever, this 'verse is made up of requests; I have two more to get to, but if there's anything you want to see, let me know!

  
_send me your picture_  
 _send it my dear_  
 _so I can hold it_  
 _pretend you are near…_

  
Michael calls James exactly when he’s promised; calls James after ducking out of drinks with Hollywood television hosts and producers, having looked at his watch, said, “Fuck!” out loud, made hasty apologies, and bolted out of the bar; he’s frantically waved at a cab, and paid the driver a staggering sum of American dollars to get him back to the hotel in under five minutes. He sprints up the stairs and into his suite and turns on the laptop and opens up Skype, and takes a deep breath, then another, in and out.  
  
Three minutes to spare. Okay. They’ll be okay.  
  
He’s in Los Angeles, surrounded by the warmth of a California summer evening. Palm trees and the tang of sunny sea-salt in the air. Bright lights and rolling hills and cars flashing by along smooth-swooping freeway curves, futuristic and antique at the same time, a vision of grandeur as imagined fifty years before.  
  
James is in Toronto, bundled up against the elevation and the chilly bite of Canadian September sunshine. In Toronto, where Michael ought to be.  
  
They’d been thrilled to be headed to the same film festival at the same time, for one miraculous moment in their careers. Had made plans, laughing. Presentations they’d want to see, pubs to close down at night, local automotive museums, a go-kart racetrack.  
  
They’d looked at the schedule, and Michael’d said, “Okay, well, if mine’s on the sixth, that’s Friday, we can come in that Thursday night, and yours is the Tuesday after, on the tenth, so that gives us the whole weekend to do…whatever we want, really,” and James had looked up with a smile in those blue eyes, warm and wicked and excited and loving: I know what I want, said that smile. And who.  
  
And then Michael’s agent had called. A reminder. An interview. Two. California.  
  
The afternoon of the eighth, for the first. Then the second one on the ninth. And he’d been scolded roundly for asking to reschedule: he couldn’t, they couldn’t, publicity was so important, and who knew how long he’d be so in-demand, he needed to go out to California and ride the popularity while he could, and there wasn’t time in any case, not with all the press tours Steve McQueen was scheduling…  
  
It’s all right, James had said. I’ll come to Toronto early with you anyway, and you can leave for a couple days and then come back, it’ll work out. But he’d looked away as he’d said it.  
  
Come with me, Michael’d said, but they’d both known James couldn’t. If the airports closed for any reason, if flights didn’t connect on the way back, if the timing wasn’t right…  
  
He’d apologized. Inadequately, desperately. James had shaken that head at him, and told him again that it was fine, and kissed him. They both understood. The profession. The commitment.  
  
The laptop gazes at him, Skype window open. James hasn’t signed on yet. Michael’s hands’re cold.  
  
It’s one in the morning in Toronto, three hours ahead. He knows that James will go out with friends while they’re apart; James isn’t the type to lie around moping in the hotel room and dwelling on the empty spot beside him. He also knows that James nevertheless likes to end the days curled up in bed, a book or a crossword puzzle accompanying him there, peaceful amber lamplight and cozy blankets. Michael’s teased him about this elderly-person tendency before; has teased him because otherwise his own heart twinges with a hopeless need to whisk James out of all the raucous parties the second blue eyes turn to find his, to take James home and shelter him when those reserves of friendliness and exuberance all run out.  
  
James loves people, and that’s genuine, every bit of pleasure in greeting friends and fans and fellow actors. James will give every last drop of energy to the rest of the world, and then come home quiet and drained, because despite all the cheerful profanity and fearless enthusiasm, James isn’t an extroverted sort of person, not really, not in the way that people think.  
  
James vanishes behind trailers on film sets sometimes, just himself and tall grass and an open sky. James vanishes at parties, too, quietly beginning the washing-up unasked or checking on intoxicated guests snoring in bathrooms, bringing them blankets. Michael’s found him in kitchens. On balconies. Sitting halfway up dimly-lit staircases, listening to and enjoying the sounds of other people having fun, smiling but not coming back down.  
  
James will let Michael hold him, back home in their flat or amid the hush of an on-location hotel room or sitting on sun-warmed dry ground beneath the endless dome of the sky. Will let Michael put arms around him and offer a shoulder for that head, a hand stroking his hair while he breathes.  
  
And Michael will never grow tired of offering. He knows that the way he knows his own heartbeat: instinctive, fundamental, vital to continued existence.  
  
He stares at the laptop, and tries not to count down in his head. One minute. Fifty-nine seconds. Fifty-eight. James had been on early, the night before. Not now.  
  
He hates leaving James alone. For the usual general reasons, of course, the way that every atom of his body feels lonely without compact dark-haired sturdiness at his side. But also for very specific reasons. One reason.  
  
Two nights, now. Two nights without himself at James’s side.  
  
There’s a noise from the laptop. The happy little burble of a welcome name appearing.  
  
He’s already hitting the button. Making the call.  
  
James answers laughing. And Michael’s world thumps back into alignment. Nondescript hotel-bed backdrop, too-small laptop screen, and the man he loves there on the other side. “Impatient, are you? How’d it go?”  
  
“It…went, y’know, fine. Usual questions. Describe your character, why’s this film so important, would I ever move to California…”  
  
“Not _really_.”  
  
“Oh yes. They heard I tried surfing. I might be lucky to get out of here without a board being handed to me as a sort of souvenir. I love you. How’re you?”  
  
“I’m all right,” James says, and pulls his knees up and wraps his arms around them, sitting fully dressed in the center of the bed. All the lights’re on around him.  
  
“James,” Michael says, and James shuts his eyes for a second. “I’m…not _not_ all right. I’m just…” Open eyes again. A shrug: retreat, though not refusal of the concern. Only regrouping, finding balance before the real reply. “I was out with Jessica and Ned and the _Eleanor_ cast. They’re still out; I just left after the fourth bar, I’m not even sure they noticed. We’ve still got one day before our screening, so it’s a good night to have Screaming Orgasms, apparently.”  
  
Michael, who knows perfectly well that Screaming Orgasms are a far too sweet amaretto-and-vodka form of getting trashed, and who also knows that _James_ knows he’s memorized the schedule, says, “Please tell me,” and James shakes his head. “You already know.”  
  
“Have you gotten _any_ sleep?”  
  
“Last night, a little, after we talked…an hour or two. Enough.” James uncurls long limbs, stretches arms over his head, out of sight of the camera, spine popping and twisting and relieving tension. Then reappears, eyebrows up. “You really like the jacket?”  
  
Michael laughs, though the sound covers up the edge of worry. “What, me texting you every time a new photo popped up wasn’t a clue? Yes, James, I do.”  
  
He does. He’s been loving the whole outfit, all the photos that keep arriving thanks to the marvels of the internet. James in fitted jeans and a thin white v-neck t-shirt and that impressively stylish jacket, James pulling off disheveled careless chic in a way that Michael never can. His own attempts at casual-but-dressy tend to veer toward Bearded Hobo or Motorbike Shark, and he’d pretty much given up and let the stylists take over with regard to public appearances after the day he’d gone to a GQ interview in lime-green track pants and a faded metal-band t-shirt. He’d been described by the interviewer as the definition of “bad road,” and also as looking as if someone’d rolled his body out there from the hotel. James, who’d come along for the sheer fun of it, had been labeled “cuddly,” and had laughed for fifteen minutes at Michael’s expression.  
  
James looks lovely, though. It’s an odd word, overused on the one hand and rarely properly meant on the other; but James is. In every photo, over a long-distance Skype connection, and always, _always_ in person, he is.  
  
This particular outfit is all greens and blues and whites, denim and cotton and that fitted jacket. The colors make the freckles glow, gilded cinnamon stars over Scottish-fair skin, visible at his throat, on his collarbone, on his nose. The slim neat curves show off _his_ curves, long legs and hips and adorably high waist and powerful broad shoulders. His hair’s standing up in rumpled dark waves, and Michael wants to lick him everywhere.  
  
Those eyes’re glowing too, even more tropical-water than usual with the surrounding colors; but they look tired.  
  
He should be there. He needs to be there.  
  
“I’ll wear the outfit again for you, then,” James is promising, luscious accent temptingly playful. Weariness set aside to make him smile. “And then take it off for you. Slowly.” With a shoulder wriggle, a roll of muscles, flexing, teasing. Michael applauds, heartfelt and prompt.  
  
James laughs. “I should change, actually, hang on…” Off the bed; there’s a second’s pause while James flips the laptop around, and then Michael’s watching him peel off layers, letting the jacket slide down from his shoulders, fabric caressing skin.  
  
“Christ,” he says inadvertently, when James stretches and that shirt lifts up, revealing a flash of pale stomach. James smiles, walks a hand ever-so-slowly to the zip of those jeans, and slides out of them in one sinuous easy movement that really shouldn’t be possible with anything that tailored.  
  
The jeans hit the floor. Michael’s breathless. James grins, not at all innocent and not at all ashamed. “Want to?”  
  
“Oh fuck yes,” Michael says, and they do.  
  
He gets James to finish first; gets James to lie on that large bed stroking himself, making little cries of ecstasy; tells James to look at him, to think of him, to come for him, to let him see it all. James gasps his name and goes tense and shudders with pleasure, and does. Michael follows less than a heartbeat later, spilling over his own hand with his gaze fixed on those bliss-clouded blue eyes and the white splashes over quivering freckles.  
  
He means to be fast. He is, and he can’t really help it—James at the brink of climax, James in the trembling grip of euphoria after, James falling into orgasm at the sound of Michael’s voice, all that guarantees that he’ll be quick, and he doesn’t try to hold back.  
  
But he’d make it fast in any case. James is also exhausted and there’s strain in those shoulders, in that voice, in all the sapphire oceans. Clouds at sea. Storms in a darkening night. James might’ve successfully and with honest desire managed to divert his concern for a moment, but rationality’s sneaking back in with the ebbing of the supernova.  
  
They’ve cleaned up and put on fuzzy pyjama pants and they’re both in bed, now, toes shoved under respective covers. It’s only around eleven for Michael; he isn’t tired yet, but he knows James must be. James, who’s not moved to turn off any of those burning lights at all.  
  
“So I very much am going to save that outfit,” James says, yawning. “Screaming orgasms yes. Good for you?”  
  
“Extremely good. More screaming orgasms tomorrow night. In person. Promise. What time’re you getting up? Didn’t you promise to go to someone’s screening in…six hours?”  
  
“Oh…I did, yes…I might make tea. They’ve got chamomile. That’s relaxing.”  
  
“James,” Michael says. “I love you. Please try to sleep.”  
  
James takes a deep breath. “Or I could eat your chocolate. Thank you for that, by the way. Again. You didn’t have to.”  
  
Today’s truffle arrival has gone as smoothly as the first one, then. Good. James had been satisfyingly surprised the first time—Michael’s got the excited smiley-faced text message to prove it—and consequently even more astonished upon the _second_ mid-day delivery from the most expensive chocolaterie in the greater Toronto area. Had called, smile audible in that luxurious voice, while Michael’d been occupied with television hosts, and had left a message simply saying, “Love you.”  
  
“You said it might help,” he says, instead of all the other words he wants to say. “I don’t see you, you know, eating one right now…”  
  
“Oh, really…” James leans over, out of frame for a second, then back. Waves a delectable drop of sweetness at him. “If I end up weighing five million stone it’s your fault.”  
  
“I can accept that,” Michael agrees, and watches him nibble and swallow and lick decadence from fortunate fingertips. Yesterday’s had been sea-salt and caramel. Today’s are dark chocolate, raspberry mousse, pink peppercorn dust. Tomorrow’s, the ones he’s planning to deliver in person, will be pistachio cream.  
  
It might matter, that sweetness. James had said as much, months ago; this’s why there’s also juice in the mini-fridge and graham crackers in James’s shoulder bag. Michael’d made certain of both upon arrival in Toronto and again before his own departure, despite the eye-roll and purposely audible Scottish-whiskey grumbling about certain people being more overprotective than his grandmother. Michael’d inquired as to whether James had shown his grandmother that research, or for that matter ever told her about the doctor who’d mentioned it to him. James had given him a horrified stare and threatened to, in turn, call Michael’s mum and announce their nonexistent engagement and moreover suggest that Michael hadn’t told them because of doubt that their award-winning culinary talents were up to catering their own son’s wedding. Michael had caved.  
  
It’s a theory, about hypoglycemia mattering, and a contested one at that. Not proven, and only correlation, not causation. People with low blood sugar being more susceptible to…  
  
…to those sorts of dreams. Night terrors. Nightmares.  
  
It’s always the same nightmare, the one that James has. Recurring. Forever lurking in the wings.  
  
James had waved a hand, dismissing the suggestion, laughing the way that James is so ready to laugh, to coax the world into being comforted: no, it’s really not proven, and anyway you’ve seen and eaten everything I bake, not as if I don’t consume enough sugar for a small country on a daily basis…  
  
True, and he knows it; knows, too, that James has seen psychologists, two of them, and has briefly tried counseling sessions and meditation, all of which utterly failed to unearth any hidden repressed trauma in the slightest, though the latter is in part why the yoga, which James has since kept up mostly out of professional and personal enjoyment of the resultant flexibility. He knows that James had decided, long before Michael’d ever kissed him for the first time, to simply live with that nightmare every time it comes.  
  
He understands that there’s no pattern, that the bad nights are random and unpredictable. But they’re nonetheless more likely during times of stress, or in unfamiliar places. Cold shadowy lonely hotel rooms, for instance, full of unrecognized shapes in the dark.  
  
He’s seen James wake up screaming. Worse, not screaming: voiceless and shaking and enormous-eyed, skin not just pale but white with fear. He’s held James for hours, until the shaking eases and that voice comes back, broken and flayed raw with unshed tears.  
  
He has to hope that sending James sugary truffle confections can help, because if not, if he’s not there, if that tall grim featureless shape stands over James in dreams and Michael’s hundreds of miles away…  
  
It’s not even a proper nightmare, James’d said early on, trying to explain while Michael’s heart froze and cracked and bled with helplessness. He’d wrapped his arms more tightly around those trembling shoulders. Hadn’t been able to speak, while James attempted to reassure him.  
  
It’s not like I’m being hurt, James’d gone on, though that voice’d sounded forlorn. Not exactly. I just—he stands there and I’m lying in bed and he’s watching me and nothing happens, because I don’t let it, because I don’t move or speak or even breathe, so he doesn’t know I’m awake, but if he does, then—  
  
Then _what_ , Michael’d whispered, two words, no air.  
  
I don’t know, James had said, shrugging, one-shouldered, truthful. I never know. I do know—in the dream, I mean—that eventually I’ll need to breathe or move or scream or do _something_ , and I _can’t_ , because then it’ll—but it doesn’t, because I wake myself up. So I don’t know.  
  
“I love you,” James says now, answering his words from earlier. “I’m all right. I did get some sleep, yesterday morning. Maybe your chocolate’s working.”  
  
“I could be there,” Michael says, and reaches out a fingertip to the camera. As if it’ll be enough. As if he can magically stretch across the wireless connection and find James on the other side. James does the same, mirroring the gesture. “I could leave now. Find a plane. Or a helicopter. Or just rent a car. It’s California, you know. Lots of cars. Fast ones.”  
  
“You could.” James pulls the fingertip back and tugs the blanket up higher over his shoulders, one-handed. Picks up another piece of chocolate, forgetting to argue about the calories, imagining along. “You could be here by this afternoon…I’d stay up and wait for you…”  
  
“Want me to?”  
  
“Yes.” That voice sounds even younger than usual, and more Scottish. Woebegone lochs and their unhappy monsters, tangled up in exhaustion. “No. You’re having lunch with the Star Wars people tomorrow before you leave. You can’t miss that.”  
  
“Watch me.”  
  
“No. Not for me.” James puts his head on one side, smiling. That smile’s a bruised sunrise: wounded, brilliant, heartbreakingly hopeful on his behalf. “You know you can’t.”  
  
“I know. I was hoping you didn’t.”  
  
“I love you. You’ll be back tomorrow night; I’ll be okay until then.”  
  
“Will you?”  
  
The answering rueful eyebrow tilt says it all: no, yes, okay enough, I love you, what can we do? Out loud, that spectacular voice only admits, “I’ve just eaten over half of this box of truffles,” and Michael smiles because James wants him to.  
  
“That’s what they’re there for. You’re making them happy. They want to be eaten, James.”  
  
“Oh, not fair,” James says, and picks up another one. Michael permits himself to feel smug. He doesn’t believe the truffles care one way or the other; but now James will feel guilty enough to finish them all.  
  
“It’s not that big a box,” he points out. “I could’ve sent you the five-pound assortment. And _then_ made you feel obligated on their behalf.”  
  
James pauses mid-swallow to toss a rather rude gesture at him through the camera. Michael needs to kiss him so very badly. Chocolate and raspberry and the taste of those lips.  
  
“I love you,” he says, instead. Not enough; but something. “You said you did sleep, for a while, last night. After we talked.”  
  
“For an hour or so. I…woke up…and then I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I got up and made tea. Read some Tolkien. I would’ve called you, but I thought you’d be in bed by then.”  
  
“I’d’ve gotten up. And…I’m not tired…could you try to sort of sleep with me here? If I stay on and talk to you?”  
  
James looks surprised. As if that’s not occurred to him to try. To be fair, it’s only just occurred to Michael, and he’s invisibly kicking himself for not having thought of it sooner.  
  
He adds, “I could even sing to you,” and earns that smile again. Sunlight, less bruised and more radiant this time, all through his chest.  
  
James says, still looking surprised, still smiling, wrapped in his blankets, chocolate melting in fingers arrested in mid-air, “…we can try,” and Michael wants to do backflips and wave pom-poms and cheer and maybe also cry a little. So much courage, and he’s so in love.  
  
“Okay,” he says. “Lights out. Or…however many of them you want out. You. Bed.”  
  
“Hang on,” James retorts, “you’ve just made me eat chocolate,” and gets up to brush teeth and from the sound of it splash water on his face; his eyes’re suspiciously damp even so when he comes back, but Michael doesn’t comment, only waits while he flips off most of the lights and burrows under the covers, facing the laptop. The light in the bathroom, sending muted compassion through the half-shut door, stays on.  
  
“Comfortable?”  
  
“Mmm.” James yawns again. “Very. Sorry I keep making you leave your Hollywood parties early. You can always tell me you’re busy, you know, if you’ve got plans.”  
  
“You’re more fun,” Michael says, “singing you to sleep is exactly where I want to be,” and it’s the whole and inarguable truth, this is everything he wants out of this night: himself with toes warm under his blanket and seeing James snug beneath his own, James smiling at him across the distance and willing to let him try.  
  
“Well, in that case,” James says, raising eyebrows, cheek pillowed on one hand. “Go on.”  
  
“Dire Straits?” Michael offers. “Genesis? Tears For Fears? Toto?”  
  
“Are all my choices terrible eighties bands?”  
  
“I’m going to stop buying you decent chocolate. Only the American kind. From now on.”  
  
“Oh, fuck, never mind, I take it back. That’s too cruel.”  
  
“You love me. Toto, then. No complaining.”  
  
“Depends on whether you meant it about the chocolate. I don’t get to pick?”  
  
“You decided to mock,” Michael says, as haughtily as possible, which isn’t very haughty when those so-blue eyes’re sparkling and happy with him, “the greatest voices of an era.”  
  
“Phil Collins counts as great? Do I have to be mentally prepared for Michael Bolton at some point?”  
  
“James?”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“I’m going to pretend that you don’t actually think Phil Collins was part of Toto, and then I’m going to sing ‘Hold The Line’ at you.”  
  
“Should I know that one? Was that Duran Duran?”  
  
“You’re getting Hershey’s chocolate,” Michael says. “The _cheapest_ kind. I’m buying it at the closest California petrol station before I leave tomorrow. Seriously?”  
  
“No, I’m entirely fucking with you,” James says, grinning. “I at least know ‘Africa,’ want me to sing along?”  
  
“Everyone knows ‘Africa,’” Michael grumbles, “five-year-old children who think the eighties were a myth know ‘Africa,’ honestly, I’m in love with a musical philistine,” and James starts laughing, and then starts humming what’s indubitably the chorus of Toto’s “Rosanna,” and Michael wants to throw a pillow at him and also kiss him and never surface for air.  
  
“You’ll pay for that tomorrow night, you are aware.”  
  
“The look on your face, though.” James blows him a kiss, over the wireless shimmer. “I love you.”  
  
“I know,” Michael says, “I know you do, I love you, always,” and then, so he doesn’t start to cry, starts singing on the spot. “It’s not in the way that you hold me, it’s not in the way you say you care…it’s not in the way you’ve been treating my friends, it’s not in the way that you’ll stay to the end…”  
  
“I will, y’know.”  
  
“James, stop talking. Go to sleep. It’s not in the way that you look or the things that you say that you do…”  
  
“Hold the line,” James whispers, “love isn’t always on time,” and Michael can’t even yell at him for this one, not when James closes his eyes trustingly afterwards, listening.  
  
“It’s not in the words that you told me,” he murmurs, singing softly to the connection, to the hand on that pillow, to the sound of slowing breaths. “It’s not in the way you say you’re mine, it’s not in the way that you came back to me, it’s not in the way that your love set me free…”  
  
He goes through the whole song, heart in every word. Watching James. Who’s asleep by the time he finishes, breathing even and calm, visible on his laptop screen.  
  
He whispers, “I love you,” at the end, and James doesn’t stir, but Michael thinks those lips might be smiling, just a hint of upward curve. Good dreams, then. He hopes they are.  
  
He knows they won’t always be. He does know.  
  
But right here, right now, James is sleeping soundly. And Michael feels invincible.  
  
You’ve got to hold it, the lyrics say. Hold the line. Love isn’t always on time.  
  
No, he agrees. Sometimes it’s belated, like the way he’d taken far too long to realize he was in love with his co-star and best friend, the way he’d nearly broken that generous heart once before through carelessness and unthinking words. James has given it to him all over again; he’s holding on with both hands and a lot of reverence, this time. He knows how much that gift is worth.  
  
Sometimes, of course, love is early. Like he’s planning to be tomorrow, as he sends the email requesting a brunch meeting in place of lunch, as he starts checking revised options for travel arrangements. Might take some effort, some favors owed, some ruffled feathers. Worth it. Obviously.  
  
He leaves the Skype window open, checking in every minute or so. James hasn’t stirred. The laptops stay on, both his and the silent one on the other end; James has fiddled with the settings so his won’t go to sleep, but it’s happy to stay up. It knows it’s doing this for James.  
  
He’ll be here if James wakes up tonight. He’ll be back in Toronto, back to fold arms as well as voice around James, tomorrow night. He’ll be here forever, and they can make this work forever. They’ve made it through tonight; even if James awakens shivering and cold, James won’t be alone, and they can do it all again if need be.  
  
He wonders which timelessly classic eighties song James might enjoy next time. He does know quite a few.  
  
He thinks of himself showing up with pistachio truffles just in time for James’s film-festival premiere. Remembers that spiced-cocoa voice laughing, months ago: I’ve always liked pistachios…  
  
Remembers himself asking, as casually as possible when it was the only question he’d ever truly needed the answer to, whether James would ever potentially maybe consider getting married, whether James wanted to be married, you know, someday, and let Michael bring him pistachio ice-cream forever.  
  
I have thought about it, James’d admitted, eyes dancing. I’ve thought about it with you.  
  
He’s not planning to propose on the spot, when he gets back. Not when James is off-balance and needing to feel secure again. The proposal needs to be special; needs to be, not public, James won’t want that, but memorable, and perfect, because James deserves perfect. It’ll take some time. Planning. A way for him to convince James to wear today’s outfit again at the right moment, mostly because now that outfit’s full of excellent memories in multiple ways. Besides, he doesn’t even have the ring.  
  
Not yet, anyway. He opens one of his bookmarked tabs. Glances at closed blue eyes, at that hand on the pillow; back at the tab. Considers how the one image might look, adorning the other. He’s pretty sure James likes gold and simple. He’ll have to make absolutely sure, sneakily, soon; in the meantime, he’s got a few hours to peruse some options, and no other place, nowhere at all, he’d rather be.  
  
Maybe he can get James to agree to a certain first-dance song. James is a romantic at heart. And, given how tonight’s turned out, well. Nothing’s more romantic than Toto, right?

  
 _my days are so lonely_  
 _my nights are so blue_  
 _I’m here and I’m lonely_  
 _I’m waiting for you_  
 _can’t you send me your kisses_  
 _oh, I can feel their touch…_


End file.
